Doctors Lack Tools to Assess Self-Awareness After TBI

Posted By Scarlett Law Group || 27-Feb-2015

Doctors and rehabilitation professionals understand that a person's ability to be accurately aware of his abilities and challenges is frequently impaired after a moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury. It is also well understood that impaired self-awareness can become a barrier to rehabilitation and recovery. Despite this understanding, however, clinicians still find it challenging to diagnose and treat impaired self-awareness.

In order to better understand this challenge, a recent study conducted a survey of 163 clinicians who provide rehabilitation support for people with traumatic brain injury. They found that:

Around 70% considered accurate self-awareness to be important to the course and success of rehabilitation efforts

Almost 96% reported using an assessment of their patients' self-awareness impairment

Only 7% reported using a standardized tool for assessing self-awareness

The most common tools used were the Awareness Questionnaire and the Patient Competency Rating Scale

One of the difficulties that clinicians face when assessing self-awareness is the lack of standardized tools that accurately and reliably measure the patient's self awareness in daily activities. The development of a tool that captures information about awareness that is more relevant to daily rehabilitation efforts is needed.

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